15

Requesting a phone number

If you’re new to SMS messaging, you’ll need to request a sender phone number that you can send messages from. Before an SMS provider will issue a phone number, they’ll require you to have some updates in place to ensure that you’re compliant with their policies, various privacy laws, and, most importantly, you’re clear about how you plan to use your audience’s phone numbers.

This means that you’ll need to update your terms and conditions, privacy policy, and other declarations that tell your audience how you’ll use their phone numbers.

This page contains recommendations and examples, but it does not constitute legal advice. Contact your legal team to ensure that you’re compliant with all applicable laws and regulations before you make changes to your privacy policy or terms and conditions.

Update your Privacy Policy

Before you request a sender phone number, you need to update your privacy policy to include information about how you’ll message your audience and use their phone numbers. You’ll also need to update your terms and conditions (T&Cs) to link to your privacy policy or include the same information.

This language must be available on your site before you submit a request for a sender number. You must provide links to your privacy policy and T&Cs on your public website when you submit a request for a sender number.

You’ll need to include information about:

• Clear consent language: Explicitly state that users who provide their phone numbers consent to receive messages from your organization.
• Opt-in and opt-out instructions: Provide straightforward methods for users to opt into, and out of, messaging services—like replying with START or STOP
• Message purpose and frequency: Inform users about the nature of the messages they will receive and how often they can expect them.
• Data usage disclosure: Explain how you use user data, particularly phone numbers, and assure users that you won’t share their data with third parties without their consent.
• Support contact information: Offer a way for users to contact your organization for assistance or inquiries related to your messaging service.

Opt-in and Opt-out instructions

We partner with Twilio to send SMS messages. By default, Twilio supports a number of keywords to opt into or out of messages. You may want to use their list of keywords in the opt-in and opt-out instructions that you add to your privacy policy.

Twilio has a post detailing opt-in and opt-out guidelines that can help you understand more about different kinds of messages and opt-in methods.

Example language

Here is an example of compliant language for your privacy policy: